Mobile data usage has been increasing at an exponential rate in recent year. A Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system offers high peak data rates, low latency, improved system capacity, and low operating cost resulting from simplified network architecture. In LTE systems, an evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) includes a plurality of base stations, such as evolved Node-B's (eNBs) communicating with a plurality of mobile stations referred as user equipment (UEs). However, the continuously rising demand for data traffic requires additional solutions. Internetworking between the LTE network and the unlicensed spectrum WLAN provides additional bandwidth to the operators. The LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) provides data aggregation at the radio access network where an eNB schedules packets to be served on LTE and WiFi radio link. The advantage of this solution is that it can provide better control and utilization of resources on both links. This can increase the aggregate throughput for all users and improve the total system capacity by better managing the radio resources among users. However, issues remain as to how to implement LWA efficiently. In LWA, one possible method is to let uplink WLAN frames carrying LWA PDUs using the EtherType value of 0x9E65 that was assigned by the IEEE Registration Authority Committee (IEEE RAC) for downlink LWA packets. Such method, however, requires upgrades/changes to the WLAN access points (APs). Given the massive deployment of the WLAN APs, this method creates large overhead for the LWA roll out. Further, in some LWA deployments, a WLAN AP may be connected to multiple WLAN terminations (WTs). Many WLAN APs may have multiple SSIDs and may belong to multiple mobility sets. Since the LWA PDUs themselves do not contain any routing information, some additional mechanism is required to achieve correct forwarding.
Improvements and enhancements are required for LWA PDU uplink routing.